Is Peach Going to Become the Next Snapchat?

Meet the new social media app creating a lot of buzz.

What is Peach? It’s basically what would happen if Twitter and Snapchat had a fruity, emoji-covered baby. Released by Dom Hoffman, the co-creator of Vine, Peach is the latest in a long lineage of sparkly new social media ventures. Like Snapchat, it’s only available as an app — there’s no web interface — and you’re connected only to your “friends,” not your followers. Like Twitter, the app lets you write short posts too. But Peach takes the idea a step further, because through a “magic word” list of fun commands, you can add GIFs, songs, books, and even movies to your messages. Instead of a wall, you have a whiteboard-like space where you can document nearly every aspect of your life, keeping your friends in the loop about what you're reading, watching, eating, and doing at all times.

It’s intriguing because it offers the intimacy of a circle of friends you know personally, and acts almost like a secret social club for your squad to communicate. You can add friends through phone numbers or usernames only, so it’s difficult to track down people you don’t actually know. To us, Peach sounds like a new way to stay connected to IRL friends, which could be a welcome change from the follower-obsessed culture of Instagram. However, there’s a fair amount of sketchiness happening on it too.

Digiday reports that while some brands like Merriam-Webster have already embraced it, others like Abercrombie and Domino's have people impersonating them. No one’s really sure if the Taylor Swift account on Peach is actually Taylor Swift, for example (care to confirm, T.Swift?). The real estate on social handles is totally open, though, so I’d claim your name while you can since it's quickly taking off.

Will Peach be a hit or a miss? That’s the question all the cool kid tech wizards are pondering. Emily Reynolds over at Wired UK isn’t so sure, and Digiday reports that, “there’s also indication that Peach, which peaked at No. 85 on the Apple App Store Saturday, is already on its way out.” So while it’s the Internet’s buzziest new app, no one’s really sure if it will catch fire like Dom's Vine or Snapchat. For now, however, we’re having fun with all the cute little bells and whistles.